


Reflections

by fid_gin



Series: The Loved 'verse [14]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 17:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1355734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctors switch suits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> Original post date: February 8, 2009

She's woken by the soft murmur of voices.

Not next to her, not in bed. She occasionally finds herself awoken by the Doctors conversing over her sleeping body, usually in English, although once or twice in particularly unguarded moments she's heard them speaking in their language. Those soft, musical syllables she will never understand and they will never translate, as rounded and undecipherable as those Post-it notes stuck to the TARDIS console. She thinks in these moments it must be herself they're speaking of. Or of home.

But now, it's English, and she keeps her eyes closed as she slowly comes awake, registers that the voices are further away than normal. Across the room, to her left.

“It's strange, isn't it?”

“Yeah.”

They're by the mirror, she realizes, and she can't help but crack her eyelids and take a peek. In front of her wardrobe the two Doctors stand, fully clothed, side by side like some carnival mirror-image in alternating colours – indistinguishable but for the brown and blue.

They regard one another in the glass. “I feel like it's been years since I wore this,” one Doctor says, and Rose begins to suspect that all is not as it seems.

“It suits you. So to speak.” The Doctor in blue, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable, studying his double as though it's the first time he's ever seen him. He tugs at the lapels of his own suit, as though it's a skin he's not quite at home in.

“That street. Running toward Rose.” The Doctor turns toward the other, blue and brown facing off. “I wanted...more than anything...”

“I know. I was there.”

The Doctor in brown hardens his features. “You stupid bastard. The only thing we ever wanted in the world, and when you averted the regeneration you...what – gave her a hug?”

The other Doctor looks ashamed, and Rose finally comprehends: they've switched suits. Her Time Lord stands here in blue, her half-human Doctor in the brown pinstripes she fell in love with so long ago. She waits for the explanations, for the excuses.

“I know,” the Doctor in blue says, finally.

“Why?”

Pause. “I was afraid.” The Doctor in blue watches himself ruffle his hair in the reflection.

“Story of your life.”

The Time Lord spins angrily on his double. “And you would have grabbed and kissed her, poured your heart out while the rest of the world and reality itself hovered on the brink of destruction, would you?”

Simple. Unhesitating: “Yes.”

The fight goes out of the Doctor, she can see it in the slump of his shoulders as he turns once again to the mirrors. “I hate this suit.”

“I know.”

“How can you bear it?”

Her second, half-human Doctor, now in brown, shrugs. “I need...I need to be different. Than you.” His voice is thick with emotion as he struggles to explain. “I'm not you. This...” He gestures to the brown suit he now wears. “This is you. This is who Rose fell in love with. I need her to love _me_.”

Silence for a time as they preen, inspect each other, turn slowly in front of the mirror. Rose smiles softly into her pillow, watching them interact. How they regard and appreciate each other, how they pose, all jutting hips and long legs and arched eyebrows.

“She does, you know,” the Doctor in blue says suddenly to his twin's reflection. The other man nods, projecting a willingness to let this subject drop immediately, switch clothes, resume places. “And...you know.”

The other Doctor in his borrowed brown suit knits his eyebrows together in confusion.

“So do I.”

They turn from the mirror, spurning that cold reflective surface for the reality of the flesh. She sees it pass between them: this strange love, this grudging jealousy, this cautious acceptance. Tentatively, the Time Lord now in blue leans over, cupping his duplicate's face gently in his palm, and plants a kiss on the other man's lips. The other Doctor freezes for a moment, then relaxes his lips against the other's, brings his hands up to the Doctor's hair as they kiss deeply and tenderly for an eternity and, Rose thinks, not nearly long enough. The room is so quiet, she can hear the soft, wet sound of their kissing – each stifled moan, each gentle sigh.

She realizes this is something more intimate than she can possibly grasp, what she's witnessed. Her heart full of love and contentment, Rose drifts back to sleep to the sound of her Doctors, quietly loving each other. It's a relief, and a lullaby – one that chases her into her dreams.


End file.
